Blogs from Barry, Vale Of Glamorgan, Wales, United Kingdom, Europe

So here we are. We made it. To the other side of the world and back. The flight was long and an added delay in Dubai made it longer still, but we got back home in one piece. So did Jans new china dining set that she bought in Pukekohe and boxed up to fly back with us. Sitting here in cold rainy Wales reflecting on the past month, there are always things to be learned from holidays: No matter how many times you order it, Den will still think a fry up is on its way if you order English breakfast tea, Caleb is possibly the best behaved baby on the planet-hats off to michelle again- the routine paid off-speaking of routine, the folder went everywhere with Michelle and she did a great job of ... read more

Due to my solid week-long chocolate binge during first-year exams week and my necessary habit of not actually wearing shoes anymore, I'm beginning to look more and more like a hobbit. I'm not quite sure what I'm questing for, but the past two weeks have been undeniably epic. It started with a escapist trip to Rosie's house in Stratford; the timing of the whole thing was fantastic really, because all I wanted to do after finishing my English exam two Fridays ago was get myself and my cramped-from-two-hours-of-pretentiously-yet-effectively-analysing-poetry right hand off campus as fast as possible. Also, when we got there (to Stratford, as in STRATFORD-UPON-AVON...) it happened to be Shakespeare's birthday, which of course is no big deal to Rosie but which naturally brought out my latent American Tourist gene. It was quite surreal, sitting ... read more

I'm trying to decide whether it's been an Insane Dancer Barbie or a Battery-Operated Super Mountaineer G.I. Joe sort of a week. For all the potential A.C. students coming for interviews this past week (affectionately labeled 'zero-years' by us wise, worldly, beyond-sophisticated first years who are, yes indeed, a WHOLE YEAR older than them), the impression was more that of a chubby purple-haired wind-up plastic troll careening rhythmically around the dance floor at Sosh. The 'initiators' of the interview week (past graduates of UWCs looking important with nametags) actually thanked my friends and I for our illustrious 'sosh induction' techniques, possibly because we looked so ridiculous that we made everyone feel less awkward! We feel that we gave them a truly realistic impression of AC at its best, Mardi Gras beads and stripes of white facepaint ... read more

Right, so this is going to have to be a short one, but just so you all know what I'm doing in 29 minutes...I will be boarding a bus for Heathrow airport, andseven hours and fifty-eight minutes from now I will be transplanted straight to the middle of Poland in my neon grape coloured Tour Choir 2008 hoodie and my immaculate white £5 fur coat from the charity shop. I had a bit of an ethical dilemmma about the coat, but finally the combined force of the arguments "but it's so...POLAND!" and "But it's so...YOU!" convinced me. The final irony, of course, is that I signed down as a vegetarian...well, I'll just have to explain it to the British Ambassador, and to the two million people who will be listening to Polish Radio Four when I ... read more

I did not wake up this morning to find I had turned into a gigantic insect, but it was just as surreal. First of all, I think I've actually got a legitimate sunburn in February. The weather is so alliteratively brilliant and balmy and beautiful that I've spent all my free time outside for the past few days; I even succeeded in having my Spanish class taught outside this Thursday because I announced that I would die a cold and sudden death without the beautiful rays of the shining sun (I said it in Spanish, and I don't actually have the vocabulary yet to be sane when I ask for things). Perhaps the weather itself is attempting to make up for certain other heartless nature-butchering eco-fascist anti-non-conformist qualities of the world, not mentioning THOSE AWFUL FAT ... read more